The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women

by Alex Dally MacFarlane

  He poured some saltwater on the new wounds on his knees. The pain radiated upwards, like a wave taking over his body.

  The winds suddenly grew stronger. There was the distant roar of thunder.

  Theo let himself be filled by the sound of the sand shifting under the force of the wind, by the sound of the rising waves, by this ocean that was everything. The ocean filled him up, and the whole world fell away, and then Theo fell away and dissolved, and life was dismantled, and only the numbers were left.

  a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 …

  At night, like every night, Theo sent messages to the stars. Sometimes he used the broken transmitter from the craft; others, he talked to them directly, face to face.

  “Stars,” he said, “are you lonely? Are you there, stars?”

  d=40,1. This is the fourth holy number.

  You know, at first I thought this was a young planet. I thought that there was so little here because life was only just beginning. I could still study it, make all this worthwhile. But then, after a while, it became clear. The scarcity of lifeforms. The powdery sand, the absence of seashells, the traces of radiation, the shortage of fish. The fish, the improbable fish. It’s obvious, isn’t it? We are closer to an end than we are to a beginning. This ecosystem has died. We, here; well. We are just the aftermath.

  Stars, are you there?

  Day again, and a walk behind the craft to where his companions were buried. Theo untangled the kelp that had been caught on the three steel rods marking their graves, rearranged his red scarf around Tessa’s rod. Not red any more – bleached and worn thin from the wind and the sun and the rain.

  “It was all for nothing, you know,” he said. “There is nothing to learn here. This place could never be a home for us.”

  He heard a beast approaching steadily, its cranks turning, its feet landing rhythmically on the sand. It was Animalis Primus. A few more steps and it would tread all over the graves. Theo felt blood rush to his head. He started waving his hands, trying to shoo the beast, even though he knew better. The beast did not know grave. All it knew was water and not-water.

  “Go away!” he screamed. “What do you want, you stupid piece of trash?” He ran towards the beast and pushed it away, trying to make it move in the opposite direction. He kicked loose one of its knees. Immediately, the beast stopped moving.

  Theo knelt by the beast and hid his face in his palms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  A slight breeze later, the beast started to limp away from the graves, towards the rest of its herd.

  Theo climbed to his feet and took a last look at his companions’ graves.

  “We died for nothing,” he said, and walked away.

  At night, Theo made his fire away from the craft. He lay down, with his back resting on a bed of dry kelp, and took in the night, the darkness, the clear sky.

  He imagined birds flying overhead.

  Remember birds?

  e=55,8. This is the fifth holy number.

  A few years ago the sea spit out the carcass of a bird. I think it was a bird. I pulled it out of the water, all bones and feathers and loose skin. I looked at it and looked at it, but I couldn’t understand it. Where had it come from? Was it a sign of some sort? Perhaps I was supposed to read it in some way? I pulled it apart using my hands, looked for the fleshy crank that used to animate it. I found nothing. I left it there on the sand. The next morning it was gone.

  Did you imagine it?

  Perhaps I imagined it. Or maybe this planet is full of carcasses; they just haven’t found me yet.

  How do you know it was a bird?

  Have you ever seen birds?

  Are you sure?

  Theo’s emaciated body ached as he pulled himself up from the cold sand. He shouldn’t sleep outside, he knew that much.

  How much of this sand is made of bone?

  Had the winds come during the night, he could have been buried under a dune in a matter of minutes. Animalis Elegans was swinging its wings in the soft breeze, walking past him, when a brilliant flash of light bloomed in the sky. A comet. It happened, sometimes.

  Are you there? he thought.

  Are you lonely?

  f=39,4. This is the sixth holy number.

  Animalis (Latin): that which has breath. From anima (Latin): breath. Also spirit, soul.

  Breath is the wind that moves you; what does it matter if it fills your lungs of flesh or bottles? I have lungs of flesh, I have a stomach. What is a soul made of?

  Do you have a soul? Do I?

  The breath gives me voice. The fish is mute, the comet breathless; I haven’t heard any voice but my own in so long.

  Are you there? Are you lonely?

  When I was a little boy I saw a comet in the sky and thought: Wings are not enough to fly, but if you catch a comet with a bug net, well … Well, that might just do the trick.

  Breath gives life. To live: the way I keep my face on, my voice in, my soul from spilling out.

  Night already. Look, there is a light in the black above. It is a comet; see its long tail? Like a rose blooming in the sky.

  If we catch it, maybe we can fly.

  Tomorrow, I think I’ll walk into the sea, swim as far as I can.

  And then what?

  Then, nothing. I let go.

  Instead of walking into the sea, in the morning Theo started building a new animal. He put up a tent just outside the fuselage, using some leftover tarpaulin and steel rods from the craft. He gathered all his materials inside: tubes, wire, bottles, cable ties, remains of beasts that had drowned in the past, or ones which had been created with some fundamental flaw that never allowed them to live in the first place. Theo worked quickly but carefully, pausing every now and then to steady his trembling hands, to blink the blurriness away. New sores appeared on his chest, but he ignored them.

  This one would live. Perhaps it would even fly.

  The rest of the beasts gathered outside the makeshift tent, as if to witness the birth of their kin.

  g=36,7. This is the seventh holy number.

  Come here, friend. Sit. Get some rest. I can see your knees trembling, your hip ready to give, your feet digging into the mud. Soon you will die, if you stay this way.

  I see you have a spine, friend.

  I, too, have a spine.

  Theo was out fishing when the clouds started to gather and the sea turned black. Storms were not rare on Oceanus, but this one looked angrier than usual. He shouldered his fishing gear and started treading water towards the shore. He passed Animalis Elegans, its wings undulating faster and faster, and Animalis Caecus, which seemed to pause to look at him through its mechanical blindness, its nose pointed at the sky.

  Theo made sure the half-finished beast was resting as securely as possible under the tarpaulin, and withdrew into the fuselage for what was to come.

  h=65,7. This is the eighth holy number.

  Once, a long long time ago, there was a prophet in old Earth who asked: when we have cut down all the trees and scraped the galaxy clean of stars, what will be left to shelter us from the terrible, empty skies?

  Theo watched from his safe spot behind the fuselage’s porthole as the beasts hammered their tails to the ground to defend their skeletons against the rising winds. Soon, everything outside was a blur of sand and rain. The craft was being battered from all sides; by the time the storm subsided, it would be half-buried in sand and kelp. And there was nothing to do but watch as the wind dislodged the rod that marked Tessa’s grave and the red scarf was blown away, soon nowhere to be seen. It disappeared into the sea as if it had never
existed at all, as if it had only been a memory of a childish story from long-ago and far-away. There was nothing to do as the wind uprooted the tarpaulin tent and blew the new animal to pieces; nothing to do as Animalis Elegans was torn from the ground and dragged to the water, its silken wings crushed under the waves.

  Theo walked over to the trapdoor, cracked it open to let in some air. The night, heavy and humid, stuck to his skin.

  i=49. This is the ninth holy number.

  The night is heavy and humid like the dreams I used to have as a boy. In my dream, I see I’m walking into the sea, only it’s not the sea any more, it’s tall grass, taller than any grass I’ve ever seen in any ecosystem, taller than me, taller than the beasts. I swim in the grass, and it grows even taller; it reaches my head and keeps growing towards the sky, or maybe it’s me getting smaller and smaller until all I can see is grass above and around me. I fall back, and the grass catches me, and it’s the sky catching me like I always knew it would. The storm lasted two Oceanus days and two Oceanus nights. When the clouds parted and the winds moved deeper into the ocean, Theo finally emerged from the fuselage. Half the beach had turned into a mire. Animalis Elegans was nowhere in sight. Animalis Primus limped in the distance. The beach was strewn with parts; only three of the beasts had survived the storm.

  “No point in mourning, ja?” Theo muttered, and got to work.

  He gathered as many of the materials as had landed in the area around the craft and dismantled the remains of the new animal that would never be named.

  He had laid everything on the tarpaulin to dry, when a glimpse of white caught his eye. He turned towards the expanse of sea that blended into mire, and squinted. At first he thought it was foam, but no; it was one of Elegans’s wings, a precious piece of white silk poking out of a murky-looking patch in the ground.

  He knew better than to go retrieve it, but he went anyway.

  j=50. This is the tenth holy number.

  Listen, listen. It’s okay. Don’t fret. Take it in. The desolation, take it all in. Decomposition is a vital part of any ecosystem. It releases nutrients that can be reused, returns to the atmosphere what was only borrowed before. Without it, dead matter would accumulate and the world would be fragmented and dead, a wasteland of drowned parts and things with no knees, no spine, no wings.

  Theo had his hands on the precious fabric, knee-deep in the muck, when he realized he was sinking, inch by inch, every time he moved. He tried to pull himself back out, but the next moment the sand was up to his thighs. He tried to kick his way out, to drag himself up, but his knees buckled, his muscles burned and he sank deeper and deeper with every breath he took.

  This is it, then, he thought. Here we are, friend. Here we are.

  He let out a breath, and it was almost like letting go.

  k=61,9. This is the last holy number.

  So here we are, friend: I, Homo Necans, the Man who Dies; you, ever a corpse. Beautiful, exquisite corpse. I lay my hands on you, caress your inanimate flawlessness. I dip my palms into you, what you once were. And then, there it is, so close and tangible I can almost reach it.

  Here I am.

  In your soul up to my knees.

  The sand around Theo was drying in the sun. It was up to his navel now. Wouldn’t be long. The wind hissed against the kelp and sand, lulling him. His eyes closed and he dozed off, still holding on to the wing.

  He was woken by the rattling sound of Animalis Primus limping towards him.

  The beast approached, its feet distributing its weight so as to barely touch the unsteady sand.

  “I made you fine, didn’t I?” Theo mused. “Just fine.”

  Primus came to a halt next to Theo, and waited.

  He looked up at the beast, squinting at the sun behind it. “What are you doing, old friend?” he asked.

  The beast stood, as if waiting for him to reach out, to hold on.

  Theo pulled a hand out of the sand and reached for the beast’s first knees. He was afraid he might trip the animal over, take them both down, but as soon as he got a firm grasp on its skeleton, Primus started walking against the wind, pulling Theo out of the sand.

  He let go once he was safely away from the marsh. He collapsed on the powdery sand, trying to catch his breath, reel it back in, keep it from running out. Animalis Primus did not stop.

  “Wait,” Theo whispered as he pulled himself half-way up from the ground, thousands of miniscule grains sticking to his damp cheek. The beast marched onwards, unresponsive. “Wait!” Theo shouted, with all the breath he had left. He almost passed out.

  The wind changed direction. Theo rested his head back on the sand, spent, and watched as Animalis Primus walked away – all clank and mechanics and the vestige of something like breath.

  MOUNTAIN WAYS

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Note for readers unfamiliar with the planet O:

  Ki’O society is divided into two halves or moieties, called (for ancient religious reasons) the Morning and the Evening. You belong to your mother’s moiety, and you can’t have sex with anybody of your moiety.

  Marriage on O is a foursome, the sedoretu – a man and a woman from the Morning moiety and a man and a woman from the Evening moiety. You’re expected to have sex with both your spouses of the other moiety, and not to have sex with your spouse of your own moiety. So each sedoretu has two expected heterosexual relationships, two expected homosexual relationships, and two forbidden heterosexual relationships.

  The expected relationships within each sedoretu are:

  The Morning woman and the Evening man (the “Morning marriage”)

  The Evening woman and the Morning man (the “Evening marriage”)

  The Morning woman and the Evening woman (the “Day marriage”)

  The Morning man and the Evening man (the “Night marriage”)

  The forbidden relationships are between the Morning woman and the Morning man, and between the Evening woman and the Evening man, and they aren’t called anything, except sacrilege.

  It’s just as complicated as it sounds, but aren’t most marriages?

  In the stony uplands of the Deka Mountains the farmholds are few and far between. Farmers scrape a living out of that cold earth, planting on sheltered slopes facing south, combing the yama for fleece, carding and spinning and weaving the prime wool, selling pelts to the carpet-factories. The mountain yama, called ariu, are a small wiry breed; they run wild, without shelter, and are not fenced in, since they never cross the invisible, immemorial boundaries of the herd territory. Each farmhold is in fact a herd territory. The animals are the true farmholders. Tolerant and aloof, they allow the farmers to comb out their thick fleeces, to assist them in difficult births, and to skin them when they die. The farmers are dependent on the ariu; the ariu are not dependent on the farmers. The question of ownership is moot. At Danro Farmhold they don’t say, “We have 900 ariu,” they say, “The herd has 900.”

  Danro is the farthest farm of Oro Village in the High Watershed of the Mane River on Oniasu on O. The people up there in the mountains are civilized but not very civilized. Like most ki’O they pride themselves on doing things the way they’ve always been done, but in fact they are a wilful, stubborn lot who change the rules to suit themselves and then say the people “down there” don’t know the rules, don’t honor the old ways, the true ki’O ways, the mountain ways.

  Some years ago, the First Sedoretu of Danro was broken by a landslide up on the Farren that killed the Morning woman and her husband. The widowed Evening couple, who had both married in from other farmholds, fell into a habit of mourning and grew old early, letting the daughter of the Morning manage the farm and all its business.

  Her name was Shahes. At thirty, she was a straight-backed, strong, short woman with rough red cheeks, a mountaineer’s long stride, and a mountaineer’s deep lungs. She could walk down the road to the village center in deep snow with a sixty-pound pack of pelts on her back, sell the pelts, pay her taxes and visit a bit at the villag
e hearth, and stride back up the steep zigzags to be home before nightfall, a forty-kilometer round trip and 600 meters of altitude each way. If she or anyone else at Danro wanted to see a new face they had to go down the mountain to other farms or to the village center. There was nothing to bring anybody up the hard road to Danro. Shahes seldom hired help, and the family wasn’t sociable. Their hospitality, like their road, had grown stony through lack of use.

  But a traveling scholar from the lowlands who came up the Mane all the way to Oro was not daunted by another near-vertical stretch of ruts and rubble. Having visited the other farms, the scholar climbed on around the Farren from Ked’din and up to Danro, and there made the honorable and traditional offer: to share worship at the house shrine, to lead conversation about the Discussions, to instruct the children of the farmhold in spiritual matters, for as long as the farmers wished to lodge and keep her.

  This scholar was an Evening woman, over forty, tall and long-limbed, with cropped dark-brown hair as fine and curly as a yama’s. She was quite fearless, expected nothing in the way of luxury or even comfort, and had no small talk at all. She was not one of the subtle and eloquent expounders of the great Centers. She was a farm woman who had gone to school. She read and talked about the Discussions in a plain way that suited her hearers, sang the offerings and the praise-songs to the oldest tunes, and gave brief, undemanding lessons to Danro’s one child, a ten-year-old Morning half-nephew. Otherwise she was as silent as her hosts, and as hardworking. They were up at dawn; she was up before dawn to sit in meditation. She studied her few books and wrote for an hour or two after that. The rest of the day she worked alongside the farm people at whatever job they gave her.

  It was fleecing season, midsummer, and the people were all out every day, all over the vast mountain territory of the herd, following the scattered groups, combing the animals when they lay down to chew the cud.